A R T S & C R A F T S 

While visiting the art galleries, you can appreciate and discover authentic native art which is not the pseudo-primitive art that abounds in other Caribbean islands but more akin to Dominican’s innermost nature. The exportation of works of art is not prohibited.  

Crafts

In both rural and urban areas, our people’s collective artistic expression is usually manifested in the production of crafts. A variety of native crafts can be found scattered throughout the city’s business areas and shopping centers.

Places of special interest are: Mercado Modelo, Plaza Criolla, El Conde Street, Las Atarazanas, and Casa de Bastidas, where a wide choice of crafts made by local artists are sold: horn, wood, leather, snail, shell, amber and larimar articles; pottery, ceramics, basketry, embroidery and locally and locally manufactured cotton fabrics. But, don’t leave the country without a typical mahogany and guano (dried leaf from a palm tree variety) rocking chair, already packed for easy shipping.

National Theater

If your stay in Santo Domingo coincides with the theater season, try to attend a performance. The Teatro Nacional is a modern building constructed in the heart of Plaza de la Cultura.

The main auditorium has capacity for 1700 persons accommodated in comfortable seats designed with an imperceptible difference in size and placed in such a way that the spectator may view the stage from any position. Its modern modulated acoustics system is capable of faithfully transmitting to the entire auditorium a whisper uttered on stage.

Enjoy Dominican and International spectacles in this fascinating theater and be part of the Dominican and International art transmitted through these modern and comfortable facilities. 

Music

Dominicans have a great liking for dance. A French observer, Father Labat, who arrived in 1795 when Spain ceded the island to France by the Treaty of Basle, commented in this respect: “Dance is in Santo Domingo, the favorite passion, and I don’t believe that there is a anywhere in the world a people more attracted to dance”.

Here, to this day, it is customary to rock and sing lullabies to children before they fall asleep. The child grows up amidst singing games, and the practice of singing before starting school work continues. The adolescent peasant sings tunes, plenas, and cantos de hacha (axe songs) in the conuco (plot of land for cultivation). He sings while praying and when he falls in love; hence the custom of singing serenades to profess his love to his beloved. And when in the countryside a child dies, they sing the baquiní.

Of all the rhythms that enrich our folklore, the merengue is the people’s expression; and, as a popular expression, it varies from generation to generation in the same measure our lifestyle changes.

We are happy people that vibrate to the rhythm of its vernacular music; and that, as the ditty from a carnival song says: “…dance in the street by day, dance in the street by night”. Everyone who hears a merengue vibrates with us to the contagious rhythm of the güira, the tambora (small drum), and the accordion.

The güira is a typical Dominican instrument that consists of a grater made of latten brass in the shape of a hollow cylinder that when rubbed with a scraper, emits a buzzing rhythmic sound. Our Indian population used it in the areíto, (Indian ceremonial song and dance). They made it from the attractive fruit of the gourd, from which they extracted the pulb and then scraped it to later rhythmically rasp it with a forked stick. There are still pericos ripiaos that use this type of güira.



The perico ripiao, minimal music expression , is composed of a three man group that interprets vernacular music. The Dominican tambora owes its peculiar sound to having on one side, the skin of an old male goat, tempered with native rum, and on the other, the skin of a young female goat that has not given birth.